What would you do with your last 24 hours of freedom?

Heavy question, I know, but it’s one that can’t help but come to mind after watching the Netflix-produced, 13-episode adaptation Piper Kerman‘s Orange Is the New Black.

Jenji Kohan is the creator of Showtime’s Weeds, one of my favorite shows ever, and the series is based on her best-selling prison memoir, and this show, like Weeds, is a fun mix of comedy and drama in which the prison feels like a real place and the women are actual people.

It’s funny about being a woman — our life circumstances change, we get older, wiser, wider, more wrinkly, but a lot of our vulnerabilities aren’t all that different.

Facing trauma and drama as you adjust to a new living situation — could be high school or college or your first apartment — here, it means prison, but same as with fair Felicity of my favorite show of my college years, Piper, our pretty (and oddly perky, considering) heroine will find a way to adapt and make the alliances necessary to survive in her new environment.

As I said, situations change, but life kind of doesn’t.

In the first episode (available on Netflix now), it’s the day before Piper turns herself in her 15-month sentence, and she’s enjoying her final 24 hours of freedom. She goes through the motions of drinks and dinner with friends, sexcapades with her fiance (will he still be around when she gets out???), and a good self-indulging cry. It all seems to ring hollow for her, and I get it. I SO get it. Deciding what to do with the end of your freedom is sort of like deciding on your last meal — no matter what you choose…would you enjoy it? Would it really matter?

I suppose it’s all about spending that day making memories that will last year in the year to come. Making whatever you do truly count. Spend it with those who mean the most to you — eat whatever the hell you want, because who cares about calories, then? And get rip-roaring drunk on martinis. (Because, again, why not?) – and have lots of amazing sex, if you can, of course — because it’s going to have to hold you a while.

What would you do with YOUR last 24 hours of freedom? And how would you make that year pass and remain as unscathed as possible?

I can’t wait for the next episode!

Check out the new series “Orange is the New Black” on Netflix. For more information check out SheKnows.com.

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2 Comments

I’d probably do the same, eat, drink, have sex get a good haircut and visit with my kids then cry a lot! LOL To measure the time while in jail, I would write a book about my escapades and teach illiterate inmates how to read.